heres a blog of a thousand words...

live to eat...

the current environment and certain developments move us to write this.


we have just surfaced from the month of ramadan when the faithful fast. having observed the observation of this  month for 6 years at close quarters we can appreciate the strength of will required to go through an entire day without any ingestion whatsoever [including nasal drops] violating one's alimentary system. we appreciate it even more since we were sometimes forced to do likewise, given the restrictions on wayside inns and hostelries in dobuy and allied parts during the month! but we like the explosion of gastronomy at the end of the daily fast, when 'give us this day our daily bread' becomes a clamour rather than a silent prayer, and the fasting gentry square their elbows and get busy!


we also had occasion to observe the goings-on at ramlila maidan. where the concept of a fast was taken to its illogical conclusion. in a land where many go hungry due to circumstances rather than by choice it is a cruel method of espousing a cause. and nothing will convince us that fasting is a means of empathising with the lower two-thirds.


be that as it may, we have always lived to eat, as seen by our girth and the fact that we eat whatever doesnt eat us [we are convinced we have chinese ancestry somewhere up the line], and therefore, if we do have to espouse a cause, we will slow, rather than fast, and thank the powers that be for a good appetite and the means to have a good meal. rather be aspirational for the masses than join 'em!


bon appétit!

hope revives?

gleaned from a recent peek into the yellow press: "at 44, there are 15 percent fewer available males than females".


we are quite intrigued at the potentialities of this finding. for it makes the chase easier. back when we had hair we were a mere blip in a sea of eager males desiring female attention. now that the competition is tapering off, we will dust off our old waistline, buff the pate and step forth. attention les femmes!


however we cant help think that we may not really need to do all this. we are so used to our current celibatory status that any deviance gives us the heebies...


and therein lies our conflict.

petits pas de retour

we occasionally slip into la belle langue, just to check that we still know how the verbs go and to generally put on airs.

we are coming back gingerly onto our adventures so readers [both of you] kindly bear with us till we get used to thinking in blog-terms.

more posts to follow. un frisson de joie court à travers mon corps...

did anyone miss us...?

hellow world! nearly 6 months since we gave of our best. and what all has happened in that time!?
- apple has become almost an orchard
- the arab spring was sprung on us
- we almost saw a new corporate entity - nokiasoft [tho this may still happen]
- a wee lad from buck house married his sweetheart and showed the world that barbara cartland WAS in possession of her faculties
- didi replaced COM with CON in bengal. kolkata will never be the same. but can she now at least comb her hair and look a bit more human??
- we changed our look to bald n boo'ful and now look like a fraud lebanese man
- a kitten entered our life and gives us many a happy moment
- two very respected influences in our life left us suddenly
- tablets moved out of the pharma world and entered computing and telephony
- we switched from coffee to tea. and only a certain yellow label started by a lad named thos.
- our eldest sibling finally got her own email id and we are terribly proud of her
- un p'tit sarko is expected imminently
- herbie continues to give of her best. just back from a nip n tuck session
- we are lusting after an i-pad
- the space shuttle is about to get spaced out.
- osama kicked the bucket with a little help from friends
- the imf showed its not immune to a bit of nookie. but hey yankees need to understand that the frogs have a far more evolved world-view. so quit being so uptight!!
- we learnt that we can live without facebook [need to post that asap]

and what have you all been upto then...?

christ!mas prayer

our client who likes art in A1

thank you sir
for your business

and ruining my sleep

and my appetite

and my grey hairs

and total and complete paranoia!

heres a token from us to you sir

we hope you like the chocolates

and we pray that you continue in the same vein in 2011

and that we continue kissing your precious posterior

in the hope of ultimate redemption

- a[d]men

10 years of [b]advertising...

a rather significant day for us today. we completed 10 years in the demonic, weird, wired, wicked, demented and very real world of advertising! the longest we have worked in any industry!


however, we offer no paens to this way of life. wild, exhilarating, breathless, we think not! all we can think of is that we need more sleep. and that st. bernardine of siena, the patron saint of advertising [oxymoron!!?] is also the patron saint of gamblers...


we got into this world thanks to a lady. and we may leave it thanks to a woman. for we realise that our latent bluntness bodes no good for a lucrative career in an industry that demands the honeyed word instead of a kick in the gluteals! where neuroses and fantasies exist merely to cover for ineptitude, crassness, lack of focus and alternate career options! an industry where the key words are 'client' and 'servicing', which are also key words in the world's oldest profession [but then isnt advertising the world's 2nd oldest profession...??]


but perhaps we shall be richer for the experience! for we have learned that creativity does not depend on the right  side of the brain any more - it can be downloaded! and that an industry that professes to be creative has far too many business school apologists running it!


and we close this wee post on the eve of the biggest [b]advert created. for the santa of today is no jolly, pot-bellied bearer of gifts but merely an illustration from harper's bazaar. sorry to rein on any parades, my deer!

matrimoany - part 2

our readers [for there are 2!] will have to bear with us while we let off on the above, in light of recent happenings on this front. we had no idea getting into the holy state was so fraught! the road thereto seems to be littered with bumps, obstacles and detours. and when we look around and see some of the mariés [who look like neanderthals on a night out] latched onto what can only be called visions, we tend to bemoan our fate. for we seem to attract the flotsam of the opposite sex. kindhearted they may be but fair of face they are not. and we wonder where these have vanished. or [as we said to the pater in anguish not 24 hours ago after yet another narrow escape] are we destined to meet orks. granted we do not set the world on fire with our bose-like features but at least people do not recoil in fright on seeing us [or so we think]!


but then, as is our wont, we speculate on the reasons thereof, and wonder if those who snog the visions have something else. personality? money? big car? amatory skills? or are the visions attracted to them precisely because their comeliness is heightened in juxtaposition to a boris-karloff reject?


perhaps we should walk into a lamp-post...

phone-y state of being!

we dont just change phones - we change lifestyles. that is our considered conclusion after last week. our berry was consigned to wherever defunct berries are consigned - something to do with the motherboard. given our acute sense of nono-technology we did not dwell much on the fate and scouted around for options as we were virtually cut off and faced a sense of loss!


at first, like adam, we decided to take a byte out of apple and try what sounded like a self-centered phone. didnt  work - this sandy outpost of civilisation is out of jobs and out of steve's product. quite a vexed situation. since we are marginally crack-berried, we cast our net further and looked for similar touchy-feely phones with mail facilities. chanced upon something called htc wildfire. quite an antithesis to our rather andropausal outlook on life en ce moment. and, like with a new bride, we are slowly unravelling its mysteries. the first thing we realised is that we are all thumbs when it comes to touch-sensitive situations [which no doubt explains our current singularity]. we generally go hell for leather when it comes to the touch and here it dont work that way! gentle,easy, feathery finger movements! however we are an adept learner and shall prevail!


so out went the berry, 3 chargers [master, office and car], 2 cd sets and what look like 14 instruction manuals [opened nary a one] and in came in a wildfire, 3 chargers [master, office and car], no cd sets and 2 flimsies in arabic, which reading right to left, makes as much sense to us as reading it left to right. so we have to unravel the delights of this instrument rather like peeling a banana.


and oh, this thing has whats called an android whatchacallit. developed by those who help seek. and we quite like its tagline. reflects our style...

the tyranny of separation

the title is not our own - pinched it from somewhere! however the thoughts herein expressed are entirely our own!

the phrase triggered off a rush of memories - we suddenly realised that separation had been an integral part of our life since we were a wee lad of 8 summers. when younger sibling [younger by 4 months] went off to parts north [for the benefit of non-indian readers as and when they stumble across this wee gem of prose: we make no distinction between cousins, blood brothers, siblings twice removed and so on].

passing through teenage periods of 'wishing to be separated from divers irritants' we went through a greater pang of separation in the early 90s when yet another sibling [practically our twin soul] heeded horace greeley's advice and proceeded west [where he has remained since, causing little alarm and anxiety]. this prompted us to proceed nor'west in 1992, at which point we realised that separation could occur in familial, culinary and societal ties. those were the days before emails, twits, fbook, blogs and other means of bridging distances and we suffered! however this also made  us value relationships more, and even manuscribed epistles became a welcome break from the tyrant [since we are nostalgia personified, we have still retained many of the letters and photos received]. we still go through pangs when we look back and realised that we missed out on the growth years of a certain quartet - thank god for photos at least!

over the 18 years thereafter, we have jetted in and out of the native and have always felt a twinge of lachrymosity on leaving people [even for a short while]. sometimes places too. but thanks to mr. berners-lee and other web-acolytes down the years, we have been able to digitally bridge the distances. of course certain distances will never be bridged and we allow ourself a rare flash of anger at certain people, just, going...

we have hardened ourself over the years and do not let most people affect us thusly any more. however in recent weeks we have realised that certain people are part of our fabric with or without digital or analog means. which has led us to the epiphany of the day - separation can be overcome if the desire to remain linked is sustained.

and to some people who have been part of the fabric for well nigh a quarter of a century, we raise our hat in salute for taking the trouble!

i-time: the travails of trying to byte the apple

alas and alack! we are facing a crisis of rather disturbing proportions - our beloved berry is about to give up. battery life exhausted, no replacement battery available and we are beside our [considerable] selves!


of late we have been warily eyeing the various products from a certain apple orchard. not for any particular against-the-tide reason, but more out of a nod to our latent geekiness! and in light of the berry grave situation that we are facing we have turned our attenton to the i-phone. given our usually precarious fiscal condition, the current offer from leading telecom operator in this here outpost made our native soul go pitter patter - free instrument on signing up for an annual package. seemed like a no-brainer!


so off we went in search of the promised instrument - only to draw a blank at all the 4 places we hared to in the quest! 2 did not sell the instrument as they were rather virginal and preferred their own folk. the other 2 did not have 'em!! come back saturday was i told, rather gruffly by exasperated looking flat-faced salesmen. would have thumped them if we did not come from more refined stock than them!


so on a quiet thursday afternoon in dobuy, the question is will i-phone or wont i-phone [like the cat i' the adage]...

the evolution of humans

first came the human being
then came the human bing - the human who knows everything
and now we see the human bling - the human who shows everything

dobuy is the spiritual home of the last-mentioned and we had occasion recently to observe the latest specimen in action. mainly of the female persuasion but a few of the other sex too. and 'twas fascinating to see how bling could cover diverse product categories - nails to clothes to mobile phones to sports to books to authors... plenty of hand waving and twirling to draw the bling-lines!


given our rather blunt nature and take on currently lived life, we were amused and also a touch annoyed at such fripperie. but we let live, for while there may be larger issues worthy of communal discussion, existential dilemmas occur to even the feather-headed. may their tribe shine on!

and people complain when i speak in french...

what more could we ask for?

one of those days when you look on the world through clear glass [cant afford coloured lenses, which is quite de rigueur in dobuy]. a day when a cricket legend made it worth getting up at the crack of dawn [on a friday 9 am IS dawn] for this cricket leg end.


given our cricketing heritage [familial and place of origin] we tend to take cricket at a somewhat closer-than-arm's-length distance. and while we have not had the fortune of meeting the truly greats, meeting dave whatmore today was for us a grand experience. and what made it better was his knowledge of our native area!


our thoughts flit to ranji, vinoo, allan, michaels, colin, ian and gordon [amongst others] this day! when in dobuy, be a chinaman!!

conditioned air!

on a day of general gloom and cafard-ish muses came a dollop of sunshine - the ancestral demense is now air-conditioned! conditioned air has always been a quest for that part of mankind that inhabits sudoriferous climes, but we never really felt the need, even in the sandy vastness of dobuy. however, a recent downgrading of the pater's health parameters back in the native necessitated this installation and we are feeling quite chuffed!


as always this triggered a train of thought leading us to speculate on conditioned air processes over the centuries. the aztecs and other tribes closer to the big bang than current specimens went au naturel with just the jollies hidden. further away from the big bang the japanese - that race of aggressive portability - came out with the foldable hand-held fan [the akomeogi] which like all good japanese things made its way round the planet. victorian england was quite a fan of fans as evidenced by several dozen images of queen vic clutching them.


in the native, where the heat, to the gora-sahib, was akin to the heat of the big bang, the fan was at once a symbol of royalty, a languid show of grace and a tool to cool. the pankha came out of british bengal and soon was a status symbol.


here in the sands we condition air from the loo to the blue! our tourist pitch to lure unsuspecting friends and family is: 'ac to come to dobuy and ac to stay'. paradoxically, in our humble dacha we have the con on at full tilt and use a thick quilt to keep warm [the duality of the gemini...!]


now that the guv is about to become a cooler dude [was always a cool one!] we raise a glass of chablis and wish him a rapid recovery! santé!

the art of uncorking champagne

we never stop learning. especially where spiritual quests are concerned.


this tutorial from the telegraph, london: with the festive season going on people have lots of reasons to pop that bottle of bubbly and now scientists at Coventry University have developed a mathematical formula which enables people to uncork the bottle without wasting even a single drop of champagne.


the formula, which has been named "smith's law" after its founder, dr. steve smith, is p = t / 4.5 + 1, where p stands for pressure and t indicates the temperature.

it is based on the well-known fact that the pressure in a typical bottle of champagne at room temperature is equivalent to the pressure of a double - decker bus tyre.
as per the formula to stop the cork from flying off, the temperature of the liquid should be between 5C and 7C, which means that the pressure will be 2 to 2.5 atmospheres, a third lower than when the bottle is at room temperature.
the researcher says that keeping the temperature right is the most important thing as if you get the temperature right, the pressure will be right and you will be able to enjoy the champagne at its best.

bertie will be pleased methinks. 

since we are a four letter word...

...we like four letter stuff: food, book, trvl, quiz, wine, gals, cars, wrds, four, bars, moms, pops

herbie at 1

the proverbial 'how time flies' context - herbie is already a year old! actually the whole saga of driving lessons, road tests, acquiring the license and herbie's arrival  into our life is worthy of a story at least! but we shall spare our readers the trauma - suffice to say that dobuy is not the easiest place for indians to get a driver's license - used as they are to considerable 'license' in the system back home!


herbie came home at 7 pm on 28 july 2009 and we missed a turning on the drive home. went about 10 kms out of our way before we could find an exit to turn back! guess thats what happens when you dont take time to understand the other part of the duality - we took just 10 mins to approve her and it was not exactly love at first steer!


the first 1000 kms were driven at a stately 80 kmph so that she could get her RPMs in order. then came october 2009 and daily trips to abu dhabi for a project. 15 days and she clocked up 3000 kms without a grimace. and thats when we fell completely for her. dusty, scratched and her first bump but she drove like a dream! and still does. and now 30,000 kms later, she has a few more bumps but her song is as sweet as the first day! and the last 12 months for us have not been the same!


so happy bday herbie! you make our days and most nights comfortable!

would-be writers and anticipated blocks

we have been toying with the idea of writing. not with any specific aim but more to check if what people say about our skills is true or not. rather gratuitous thinking we agree. if we are unable to manage a blog, how can we manage larger tomes. but perhaps the challenge is within rather without. a good writer, or so we are told, is disciplined enough to churn out x pages / words per day. but to our naive sensibility, that seems a paradox - why discipline something that depends more on free thought?

however as a consumer of much and varied literature, we  can appreciate that a certain order of the thought process is mandatory for the world thrives on order. systems. processes. hence word-processor, and not word-originator! and we also realise that for writing to be productive [read paying] systematic output is the norm, rather than discrete outbursts during momentary calm periods in an otherwise frenetic life! and perhaps inculcating this as a habit willhelp enforce order in our working life.

a post a day - doesnt seem much does it now?!

fits and starts

like the trabants of old, our blogs appear in fits and starts :) rather than identifying cause we would rather check the effect - our audience is deprived of updates from the sands of dobuy!


work, holiday plans, general inertia and le cafard - reasons four why the posts don't pour!


let us hope the clouds part and the blogosphere is enriched with our humble offerings.


till then, festina lente!